Played on: PS5 (Original)

Difficulty: N/A

Behaviour Interactive, the developers behind Dead by Daylight, deliver a new kind of multiplayer experience with Meet Your Maker that mixes the base-building of Minecraft with the deadly thrills of Indiana Jones exploring a trap-filled cave.

Right from Meet Your Maker’s initial reveal trailer, it was clear that Behaviour was concocting something special and totally different from Dead by Daylight. On the surface, Meet Your Maker is more of a single-player game with some co-op elements that sees players assume the role of a Custodian – a nomad who finds themselves stuck as a scavenger for a strange being called the Chimera. The Chimera supposedly harnesses the power to potentially restore the world to its proper form but can only evolve if the Custodian brings it a powerful resource known as GenMat. So, players are tasked with infiltrating outposts created by other players to steal their GemMat and satisfy the Chimera’s bidding.

Now, if Meet Your Maker was just invading other players’ bases, it’d still be a blast. Whether you’re by yourself or teaming up with a co-op partner, there are plenty of thrills that come from taking on the challenges of rival bases. Behaviour has given players the tools to put death and danger around every corner so that stealing GenMat is no easy task. From an assortment of deadly traps that players can stick on the walls to an array of mutated soldiers that can be unleashed, players will face plenty of resistance when invading. There’s this great competitive nature to Meet Your Maker’s invading and it’s where players will become addicted to defeating every challenge that’s in their path.

Even when a base is pushing players to their limits and just killing them at every turn, there’s still this spark to learn and conquer. The trial-and-error nature of exploring can be a lot of fun and there’s something incredibly satisfying about systematically decimating a player’s outpost or catching all their hidden tricks. Also, it’s been pretty remarkable to see how strong the community’s creativity has been with their base creation – especially since the game has only been out for such a short time. Players have really taken the tools that Behaviour has given them and created surprisingly vast mazes, full-on deathtraps, and found creative uses for enemies to swarm players. Plus, there’s nothing more thrilling than bolting to the exit like Indiana Jones as traps go off after the second phase begins once the players grab the GenMat.

Outpost invasions are only half of what Meet Your Maker offers though as players can also build their own bases to earn some currency that helps upgrade weaponry and trap efficiency. As someone who has never been into building games like Minecraft or Mario Maker, there was some hesitancy going into Meet Your Maker’s base-building. Yet, it quickly became an incredibly fun and enthralling experience. It’s a great mix of simple and versatile as Behaviour keeps things confined to one direction while still leaving plenty of wiggle room for creativity to flourish.

By putting the GenMat in a specific place and requiring players to have a path that the Harvester can traverse from start to finish, there’s a standard set that at least gives players a great starting point. From there, the possibilities feel virtually endless and the capabilities that players have with turning their base into deathtraps is incredible. It’s surprisingly fun to map the walking patterns of soldiers and there’s a lot of variety for how players can place enemies throughout the base.

For instance, my friend and I found a fun way to surprise invaders by timing the arrival of a large group of enemies so that they would unexpectedly face an army as they try to escape. Recently, players have found creative ways to use holographic blocks to hide enemies and traps for sneak attacks and create sudden trap doors. Trap placements can be even deadlier than the mutated soldiers as players can hide them really well to entrap invaders into deadly games of survival. Seriously, players can be very sneaky with how they trick invaders and there’s some sinister creativity on display within this community.

Honestly, the Meet Your Maker community feels like it has a lot in common with the Halo: Forge community because of how fun and creative they’re being, and that’s an amazing thing. Plus, Behaviour has built in other elements to elevate the building experience and help players improve their bases. The ability for players to view replays of invaders’ runs is incredibly crucial to making your base an impenetrable deathtrap. It’s a very useful tool that helps players identify weaknesses in their outposts and see which trap setups work best. Also, it’s just fun to watch people constantly get caught in your traps and see your nefarious plans come together flawlessly. Meet Your Maker lets your inner villain out through its build mode and there’s nothing more satisfying than that.

Even for the game’s greatness though, there are some shortcomings to Meet Your Maker that can’t be ignored and mostly stem from Behavior simply needing to do more to build out the experience. While the starting set-up of soldiers, traps, and weapons is enough to get players off the ground, it’s far too thin and Meet Your Maker desperately needs more elements to simply add some variety. The cycle of going into bases can get a little stale after a while since the trap, soldier, and weapon options feel so slim and Behaviour could definitely add in some more elements as well as new environments just to freshen things up.

Also, there’s some balancing that’s needed for the currency since the game kind of deprives players of a key currency. In total, there are three types of currency and while Parts and Synthite can be earned pretty consistently, the third type – Cells – can be a pain to obtain. It’s a material that’s essentially required to do a lot of upgrades and purchases but takes far too long to accumulate compared to the other currencies. Thankfully, Behaviour smartly doesn’t try to make this up through microtransactions, but they still need to do something just to make it not feel like it’s unnecessarily slowing down the process of improvement. They could easily add in some daily challenges or side goals for building that would give players more Cells and spice up the experience.

Frankly, all Meet Your Maker needs at this point is some tweaking and more content – something that Behaviour has shown that they can do exceptionally well in the past. A big reason that Dead by Daylight became such a success was due to Behaviour’s incredibly strong technical and free content updates and they could easily give Meet Your Maker the same treatment. They’ve already established a three-month content roadmap – which includes a new map setting and other additions – and given their past pedigree for updates, Behaviour could make Meet Your Maker just as ongoing and expansive as Dead by Daylight.

Behaviour Interactive’s follow-up to Dead by Daylight is another thrilling multiplayer experience full of promise and potential to become an ongoing success like their previous venture. It definitely still needs some improvements just to flesh out the experience more, but Meet Your Maker is off to a great start with the mix of action-packed invasion and sinister base-building being driven by the strong creativity of the community, Behaviour’s incredible vision, and a simple but expansive concept that’s pure fun – especially with friends.

Watch the Trailer Here: